Even as it's entered the digital age, the Toronto Public Library has kept real live people at the heart of its enterprises, keeping the world's biggest library system busy and an crucial part of everyday Toronto life.

At some Colorado libraries, there are no overdue fines, no Dewey Decimal System and absolutely no shushing!

A revolution is underway. And leading the charge is Anythink, the rebooted seven-branch Adams County system, which has a smattering of digital studios, 3-D printers, photography labs and a cafe. Anythink has gone from one of the state's worst-funded library systems to a national leader within a decade.

On Monday, Anythink's innovation team was in Austin, Texas, at South by Southwest Interactive to inspire the tech community into collaborating with libraries. Joining a group of spirited librarians known as lib*interactive, the Anythink team hit the streets equipped with temporary tattoos, colorful chalk and a snappy slogan: "Not the same old shhh."

New York public libraries are aiming to bridge the digital divideNew York City public libraries are on the verge of launching a truly awesome program: he New York Public Library is launching the nation's largest Internet lending program, handing out 10,000 free high-speed hot spots to some of the city's poorest residents.

The program which offers the devices for up to a year, about a $1,000 value, seeks to bridge a digital divide in the nation's largest city, where studies have found nearly 3 million of the 8 million people lack broadband access.

"all libraries (really librarians in all contexts) serve a community, be that a community of citizens, students, faculty, lawyers or what have you. There is more that binds librarians together than separates them. That said, I have heard of a special set of concerns surrounding public libraries recently and it got me thinking. The conclusions I’ve come to, I believe, relate to libraries and librarians in just about every setting. But let me start with public libraries.

The two big concerns I’ve heard about are “what happens when public libraries are the last civic service agency standing,” and “as libraries expand services to include everything from tax help to maker spaces, how am I supposed to know it all?!” These two concerns are related.

Our libraries are continuously changing. Library 2.0 is still present in every little information activity in the social media and library context, but we no longer need this particular concept to put its meaning into action.

Social media is an opportunity for libraries to market themselves, to develop and to interact with users. Each library is still challenged to shape their own strategies, find the right level of priority for social media among all the other provided services, and reach out to their own library users.

"More iTunes-y than Netflix or Spotify, Hoopla is a cloud-based digital media platform that enables users to instantly borrow entertainment and educational material off the website or through the Hoopla app on a tablet or smartphone” (Enis).

As far as librarians go, I’m pretty tech-savvy. Even then, I admit, I’m not that tech-savy. So it was only a few weeks ago that I discovered (thanks to my librarian friend) you don’t have to have an e-reader to read e-books or borrow CD’s to stream music and audio through your library! Mind. Blown.

This article provides a useful overview of the mobile device ecosystem & its uses for librarians, although it is slanted towards academic libraries. The most useful feature is all the references the author supplies.

As I got ready to tour the James B. Hunt Jr. ­Library at North Carolina State University (NCSU), Raleigh, last spring, as part of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) meeting held nearby, the buzz about the newly unveiled building had reached such a level that I expected to find it, however cool, overhyped. It wasn’t. It was exactly the right amount of hyped. “Every corner of the Hunt Library is designed to be memorable and stunning,” the library’s vision claims. Grandiose as that might sound, those corners deliver.

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